Valorisation of low-value waste glycerol could transform the economics of biodiesel production.Key challenges for achieving this with biocatalysis are the rate of glycerol conversion to products, integrating bioprocess steps and tolerance of crude feedstock contaminants by host strains.

We are industrial and academic bioprocess, cell-engineering, omics and bio-systems specialists. We will port pathways into Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Pichia pastoris for production of two valuable compounds from glycerol: chiral amino-alcohols (CAA) and 1,2-propanediol (PDO).

Cells will be characterised with high throughput micro-scale process techniques and at scale. Transcriptomic and metabolomic data will be combined with process insights to dictate refactoring of both pathways and host 'chassis'. These steps will be repeated for second-iteration cells, driving better performance. New strains, processes and integrated methods will be of use to biodiesel and Industrial Biotechnology sectors.